


So Sweet and So Cold

by semperama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Cooking, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 22:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7140380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's too hot, and Nix is in an awful mood, and Dick wants to make it better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Sweet and So Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little bit of fluff inspired by some of dancinguniverse's headcanons re: Dick and Nix and cooking (and also inspired by the fact that it is TOO HOT OUTSIDE).

In July, the temperature breaks 80 degrees almost every day for a week, and Nix, of course, acts like they are living on the surface of the sun. 

“My mother has air conditioning in her new apartment,” he says, waving the letter in front of Dick’s nose like a challenge. “Maybe we should have something installed.”

“Do you know how much that would cost, Lew?” Dick asks.

“Money’s not an issue.”

_Money is always an issue,_ Dick wants to say. “It’s not worth it for the few weeks out the year that it gets this hot.”

That’s the end of the argument, but Dick still expects workmen to show up at the door any day to rip apart the house and put in the proper ductwork. It wouldn’t be the first time Nix went behind his back and spent exorbitant amounts of money on frivolous things. A brand new set of tools for the garden, even though Dick was making do with what he had. A pair of work shoes when he noticed Dick’s old ones were starting to get a hole in the sole. A bicycle with a basket on it when Dick insisted it didn’t make sense to take the car on every short trip down to the store. That last one Dick had threatened to return, but after a short quarrel Nix became so surly and withdrawn that he decided to keep it in the end. He had taken Nix out for dinner in an attempt to even the score. 

But days pass and no one comes to put in an air conditioner. Instead, Nix keeps up a steady stream of complaints that, to Dick’s surprise, take the form of reminiscences. It’s as if Nix thinks that keeping his mind on past summers will help him escape the current one. He tells Dick one night at the dinner table about a summer on the French Riviera, where they kept the windows open day and night, even though the downstairs neighbors threw loud parties. His parents had slept through them, but Nix never could, and he’d lie awake trying to hear the sound of the ocean beneath the tinkle of crystal and loud peals of laughter.

“It’s so mild there,” he says to Dick as he stabs listlessly at the boiled potatoes they are having for dinner. “All year round. Who the hell wants to live in New Jersey anyway?”

Another time, he tells Dick about the apartment he spent most of his childhood in. During the hot, humid New York summers, they would take any excuse to get out of the apartment. Nix would go down to the park and float his model yachts and splash water up on his neck even though he knew his mother would box his ears for coming home with a dirty collar. The whole family would go down to the Ritz Carlton for dinner, where huge fans kept the air moving pleasantly and they ate shrimp cocktail and cold soup and ice cream.

The strange thing is, Nix isn’t usually much of a complainer. Dick has seen him absolutely miserable, has seen him trudge through miles of snow and sleep on the ground, has seen him after the plane he just jumped out of got shot down with most of the other men still inside it. Nix will try to drink things away, or he will throw a tantrum and move past it, but he isn’t the type to whine and moan. It seems significant that he now talks mostly in grumbles, schlumping around the house like he’s in danger of melting into a puddle at any moment. 

Dick feels like he should do something to alleviate his grouchiness, if only for the sake of his own sanity, so he brings ice cream home from the store one day. It makes Nix smile—a real smile, not a sardonic smirk—for the first time in weeks, but that just makes Dick want to see if he can reproduce it. He is half convinced there is something other than the heat at the heart of Nix’s sour mood, and maybe if he can remove one of the causes he’ll find the other.

The answer comes to him when he is lying in bed, unable to sleep because of the heat and the things he sometimes sees when he closes his eyes. He is replaying one of the stories Nix told him, the one about his family going to the Ritz for dinner, when it hits him. It won’t be easy—it might not even work—but he has an idea. 

The next day, after they get home from the nitration works, he tells Nix he’s going to the store, but he stops by the library first and copies down a recipe on a scrap of paper he brought along in his pocket. Some of the steps make him grimace, but it’s probably about time he learned this kind of thing anyway. The art of cooking has eluded him thus far, and if he’s being honest with himself, it rankles him. Rarely has he come across a skill that he can’t master with a little effort, so it’s unsettling that he has a tendency to produce meat as tough as shoe leather or potatoes the consistency of glue. 

Meanwhile, Nix can mostly wing it. He can taste something and know if it needs more salt—and know exactly how much more salt to put in too. He does the majority of the cooking at home, and it just doesn’t strike Dick as fair. Not when Nix insists on paying for most things. Not when Nix is generous to even let Dick stay with him at all. 

So maybe this plan is as much about evening things out as it is about lifting Nix’s spirits. Dick just hopes it works.

At the store, he buys much more of everything than he needs, knowing it’s probably going to take him many tries to get this right. He sneaks in the back door when he gets home, his arms laden with paper bags, and he is halfway through putting the ingredients away in the refrigerator when Nix walks into the room.

“You didn’t even take the list with you, you know,” he says, pointing to the pad on the counter behind Dick. “What did you buy?”

“Oh, just a few things.” Dick hastily stuffs the last of the leeks in a drawer and turns back to the shopping bag. “Sorry. I’ll make another trip tomorrow.”

Nix flaps a hand at him, edging closer to try to peer into the bags. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll have someone make a delivery.”

Dick moves his body to shield the food from Nix’s view, even though he know he’ll be able to open the fridge and see for himself whenever he wants. Hopefully a random assortment of ingredients won’t assemble itself into a complete dish in his mind. Hopefully Dick can keep the element of surprise. He looks over his shoulder at Nix and asks, “Did you eat dinner already?”

“Just had a peanut butter sandwich,” Nix says. “Want me to make you one?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.” Normally Dick would insist on making it himself, but if it’ll distract Nix while he puts away the rest of the food, it’ll be worth it.

Nonsensical as it is, over the next few days Dick worries about the temperature dropping more than he worries about anything else. Fall might try to make an early go of it, or they might get a few days of reprieve, and then all of his effort will be for naught. Or at least will be a lot less meaningful. The heat wave sticks around though; in fact, it gets worse, the temperatures climbing into the low 90s in the early afternoons, the house turning into an oven. They fling the front and back doors open wide in the evenings, but there is no breeze to speak of. Nix starts taking cold showers when they get home from work. Dick tries it once too, but when he gets sticky again in a matter of minutes, it feels like a waste.

He does his work in the wee hours of the morning. Insomnia keeps him up at odd hours anyway, and Nix sleeps like the dead, so Dick doesn’t have to worry about waking him when he’s banging around in the kitchen. He slaves over slicing leeks into precise half-moons, boiling potatoes until they are the exact right consistency, tasting broth over and over again until the blend of spices seems right. Not that he would know, really. He has never dined at the Ritz Carlton. He has never sampled the best French cuisine. His palate probably isn’t even refined enough to tell what’s right and what’s wrong. But he does the best he can, and that will have to be good enough.

It takes him three nights to get it right, and he almost runs out of ingredients in the process. The first night he makes two batches, one that is too lumpy and one that comes out tasting more like thyme than anything else. The next night he cooks everything a little longer and pushes it through the sieve twice to get it to the right consistency, but he accidentally puts in too much cream and then overcompensates with too much salt. Finally, on the third night, after measuring meticulously and adding spices little by little to the finished product, he takes a spoonful that puts a smile on his face. It’s four in the morning when he goes upstairs to bed, having put the soup in the refrigerator to chill. He is soaked in sweat, and his hands are tired from chopping and mashing and stirring. Work tomorrow will be a chore. But he imagines sitting Nix down at the table and putting a bowl in front of him and thinks it will all be worth it.

He waits until the drive home the next day to tell Nix, “I’ll make dinner tonight.”

Nix glances over at him with eyebrows raised. It’s sweltering inside the car, even with the windows rolled all the way down, and there are beads of sweat on his brow. Dick tracks one of them as it slips down the side of his face, until he reaches up and absently wipes it away. 

“You sure about that?” Nix asks. “We can go to the diner if you want. Get out of this heat.”

“No, I—” Dick stops, trying to decide how to put this so he doesn’t make Nix suspicious. “I...already made something, actually.”

“What?” Nix frowns at the windshield. “When did you have time to make something?”

“Last night, after you went up to bed.” It isn’t really a lie. He _did_ make the final batch last night. And Nix doesn’t need to know that he isn’t sleeping much, or how much effort it took to get this particular meal just right.

Nix keeps on frowning, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel like he wants to ask more questions. His shirtsleeves are pushed up to his elbows, his tie loose. Dick watches him silently, waiting for him to either start with the third degree or agree to brave the dish Dick made. Eventually, he gives a little half shrug and huffs his assent. “Okay. That’s fine. You planning on telling me what we’re having?”

“You’ll see,” Dick says, and wipes his sweaty palms on his thighs.

When they get home, Nix goes upstairs for his customary cold shower, and Dick gets the soup out of the fridge so he can taste it one more time. It still tastes alright. Maybe not the best thing he’s ever put in his mouth, but it’s at least better than what Nix has come to expect from him. He puts two empty bowls into the refrigerate to chill, and when he hears the shower shut off upstairs, he gets them out again and spoons out two portions of the soup. He is just setting them on the table when Nix walks into the kitchen, his hair damp and glistening, an anticipatory smile on his face.

“So what—”

But he doesn’t get the full sentence out. His eyes fall on the table, on the bowls, and his eyes go wide. He walks over and lays the backs of his fingers on the edge of the bowl at his spot, and his eyes go wider.

“It’s—” Dick starts, but Nix cuts him off.

“ _Vichyssoise_ ,” he says, with perfect French pronunciation. He looks up. “You made this?”

Dick’s cheeks are burning, but he nods. “It took some trial and error.”

“I’ll bet.” 

They stare at each other for a long moment, until Dick needs to do something and slides his chair back, grateful when the screech of the tile breaks the silence. He sits and picks up his spoon and looks up at Nix again. “Well? Are you going to try it?”

It seems to take an eternity for Nix to pull out his chair and fall into it, pick up his spoon, and dip into the soup. Dick watches as he puts the first tiny sip to his mouth, slides the spoon onto his tongue, closes his lips around it. His eyelashes flutter, and he makes a small sound, a sound Dick wishes he could have heard a little better. Wishes he would make it again, and louder.

“Jesus, Dick. It’s good.” Nix sounds shocked, but not meanly so. More like he can’t believe his luck than like he can’t believe Dick made it. He takes another spoonful, and Dick watches him eat that one too.

“I’m sure it’s not as good as you’re used to, but—”

“It’s better,” Nix says, and incredibly, he seems to mean it. It’s the heat, Dick thinks. It’s like how a sip of water would be the sweetest nectar in the world to a man dying of thirst. Maybe Dick could have just served him a bowl of cold cream and he would have liked it just as much.

Nix empties his bowl and asks for seconds before Dick is even halfway through his first. Dick has been too busy trying to watch Nix eat to apply himself to the task of eating himself. It does hit the spot, he has to admit. Every bite seems to make the heat recede a little more, until he hardly notices anymore the way his shirt is sticking to his skin or the sweat prickling on the back of his neck. But as refreshing as it is, it’s Nix’s reaction that makes it worth it. The gusto with which he eats. The ghost of a smile that won’t leave his mouth. The fact that he seems happier than he’s been in days.

Dick gets up to get him more, but just as he’s slipping the ladle into the pot, a hand comes down on his shoulder and he jumps and whirls around. Nix is standing there, his brow furrowed, his bare feet curling against the tile. He obviously has something to say, but it takes him a moment to speak. Dick waits.

“I know I’ve been impossible to live with,” Nix says at last. It’s not really an apology, but it’s still more than Dick needed from him.

“You’ve been fine, Nix,” he says, meeting his eyes so he knows he means it.

Nix shakes his head. “No, I haven’t. And I don’t just mean...about the heat.”

He could be talking about his drinking, or about how work can put him in the sourest of moods, or about any number of things that Dick doesn’t care about. Out of all the places in the world and all the people he could be with, Dick is exactly where he wants to be. He can’t imagine a different life. Doesn’t want to. 

But he doesn’t have the words to tell Nix that. He has soup. So he turns around again and ladles some out, then turns and holds out the bowl. 

Nix reaches for it, but he doesn’t take it. He lays his hands over Dick’s, his fingers cool and dry and inquisitive as they slide over his skin and then wrap around his wrists to hold him in place. As if he wasn’t already rooted to the spot. As if he would even consider pulling away.

Nix’s mouth is cold too, and Dick doesn’t know if it’s the shock of the temperature or the shock that Nix is kissing him at all that coaxes the sound of disbelief out of his mouth. He tastes salt on Nix’s upper lip and thyme on his tongue, and he thinks maybe he would be happy if he never tasted anything else again in his life but this. It makes sense now, he thinks. Everything makes sense. He wanted this before he even knew he wanted it.

“You’re something else, you know that?” Nix says against his mouth before he pulls back. 

For lack of something better to say, Dick inclines his head at the bowl in his hands, fighting a smile, pretending his heart isn’t racing. “Do you want this or not?”

“You’re damn right I want it.” Nix lets go of Dick’s wrists to take the bowl from him, but before he walks back to the table, he leans in for one more kiss. “I hope this means you’re going to cook more often.”

“Hmm. I wouldn’t bet on it,” Dick says, but this time he can’t stop himself from smiling.


End file.
